Everything Happens as It Does by Albena Stambolova Page B

refusing to ebb into the past. His decision to leave Raya, for example.
    The past was not at all a quiet background, a foil to his new adventures. There was still something to be done, but what was it—that was the riddle. He suddenly thought of his mother and shivered. What would Maria do in such a case, or rather, what did she do? Nothing. The answer was nothing, she did nothing.
    On the other hand, he couldn’t stand the idea of doing nothing—and wasn’t that what it meant to be Valentin? Or at least try to be Valentin?
    Then he thought that if Raya got married, maybe he would be able to make love again.
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42.
Post
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    Fanny was as fretful on the inside as her cat was on the outside. The inevitable awakening. Cleaners had been hired over the phone and asked to come and bring the place to its previous state, its only state—one fit for logarithmic functions.
    But the reason Fanny was irritated was not the cleaning. For the first time in her life she did not feel like working, she did not feel like dealing with the gallery at all. She went there anyway, sat down in her vast office, wrapped in the silence of Christmas day, and stared blankly at the piles of papers and catalogs. She flipped through her agenda, but everything seemed devoid of interest. She suddenly felt like doing something ordinary people would do—let some stupid guy take her to the cinema, for example. Her system did not include the option of just calling up someone. The “someones” simply gathered around her and she gave them directions like a switchman at a railway junction.
    Fanny had always had her life organized. If she did not work from six in the morning to ten at night, she feared losing her brilliance. But here she was now, sitting, rotting because of this idiotic hollow day, this “holiday,” and no one cared. She had to get a grip on herself, otherwise she risked losing it. In the same train of thought, she remembered something. In her car, she had a bag with everything needed for a short trip, and another bag with accessories for the gym and for swimming. Her credit cards were there, and her passport with a one-year visa for the European Union. She picked up the phone and booked a room at Hotel Athene in Athens. A little later, passers-by on the streets of Sofia glared after a BMW, wondering what thick-necked boss was pushing pedal to the metal this time.
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43.
Erotica
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    Mr. V. unlocked the apartment door and stopped to listen for any noise. Half past eleven, Christmas morning. He was anxious, tense, ready for anything—an attack and a quick retreat. The words he was likely to hear scared him. One couldn’t do anything with words. He was less scared by things in the absence of words. He could hold somebody’s hand for hours, rub somebody’s little feet, change wet towels, and check somebody’s blood pressure. He could run to the pharmacy to get something and juice tons of citrus fruit. But words, words were deadly. They paralyzed him; they deprived him of his dignity every time he could hear himself mumble in response to Madame’s fiery cannonballs.
    The house was quiet like a closed box. Mr. V. went into the living room and saw a row of different-sized bottles neatly arranged on the coffee table. A blanket and a pillow were on the sofa—somebody had slept there. The lights were on.
    Suddenly he felt panic—pills! Covered in cold sweat and trembling, he pushed the bedroom door ajar. His wife was lying across the bed, the shutters and the curtains were closed, and it was almost dark inside. He tiptoed toward her. She was breathing. Thank God.
    His presence did not wake her. She lay relaxed in her lacy underwear, which stood out dark against her skin. In spite of himself he admired her body, curvy, but well proportioned, and below the belly, that incomparable little mound; looking at it suddenly aroused him. It excited him to see her strong and round legs